Communication devices, such as radio accessories that receive (RX) and transmit (TX) audio, are commonly used in business, military, public safety, industrial, commercial, SWAT and personal applications, among others. These communication devices are often used in loud, stressful and unsafe environments. As a result, it can be difficult for a user to hear and/or understand an incoming audio transmission. With most conventional communication devices, if the user does not hear or understand a recent audio transmission received from a sender, then the user must call back the sender to ask him or her to repeat the previous transmission. A user might have to call the sender back multiple times if it is too difficult to hear a particular received audio transmission. This is undesirable from a number of standpoints. For example, each new audio transmission by the user to and from the sender during an emergency situation wastes valuable time that could be better spent dealing with the present emergency. During such an emergency, the ability to act and respond to certain situations in a quick or timely manner is of great importance.
The need for a user to call back the sender can delay the user from acting upon important information contained in the first transmission since the user must wait for the sender to re-transmit the previous message. An increase in repeat transmissions can disadvantageously tie up available communication channels and/or bandwidth. Moreover, each additional transmission drains power from the communication device's battery, and thus wastes the battery's energy. It is also not safe to divert the user's attention by requiring him or her to call back a previous sender during a potentially critical and/or dangerous situation since making such a call creates an unneeded distraction.
Certain devices exist which allow a user to record and playback AM/FM/satellite radio and television presentations for entertainment purposes. For example, these devices allow a user to listen to or watch a missed portion of the entertainment in a convenient manner. The user may further be able to choose how much of the missed entertainment that he or she desires to listen to or watch. This is typically accomplished by means of automatically recording an incoming data stream in a circular manner. After a fixed time period of sequential recording, the recording apparatus will continue to record by overwriting the already recorded material in the same order that it was originally recorded, such that the oldest data is overwritten first. For example, in an AM/FM/satellite radio or television apparatus, a recorded version of the last couple minutes of the presentation will be available for a user to access.
However, such a recording and playback process does not provide the user with the ability to selectively save discrete data. Instead, these conventional recording and playback devices continuously record received audio/video in a manner such that the user has no control over which portion of the received audio/video he or she desires to store for future playback. This inability to choose what discrete data should be stored for future playback results in the user wasting valuable time since he or she needs to search for it. The selection of playback data is made more difficult by the continuous circular recording since it can eventually result in overwriting the portion of audio/video that is desired to be saved once all the available memory is used up. Moreover, incorporating such a conventional recording and playback feature into a communications device would be problematic since incoming transmissions can be received intermittently. As a result, it would be difficult for a user to differentiate each transmission if they are all saved as a continuous data stream. It is thus apparent from the foregoing that there is a clear need for a communications apparatus that allows a user to selectively store a discrete message, or a portion of received audio, while continuing to capture incoming audio, which the user can selectively store in place of the previously selected/stored audio, as is provided by the present invention.